


the unburning flame

by Val Mora (valmora)



Series: the temple of all the worlds [2]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Bajoran Religion, Cheating at Cards, Established Relationship, M/M, Oral Fixation, Roleplay, erotic coda, fraught ethnic background, is it still roleplay if you're being an au version of yourself?, on this ship a-qing has two daddies and is mad that she likes it, religion-related kink, sex with metaphysical aspects
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:08:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27011011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valmora/pseuds/Val%20Mora
Summary: Xingchen is sitting exactly where the incense burner standing in for the Prophets would be, if Song Lan kept a prayer alcove in their bedroom.
Relationships: Sòng Lán | Sòng Zǐchēn/Xiǎo Xīngchén
Series: the temple of all the worlds [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1971289
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	the unburning flame

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is going to make zero (0) sense if you haven't read the previous installment in the series. This is an...erotic coda (the sex is very present, but not the point of the endeavor). 
> 
> About the (ultimately sexy) roleplay: it is repeatedly stated during the narrative of the scene that the participants have discussed what they want out of the scene, in the domains of: physical eroticism, the character roles they're playing, the very particular holes in their hearts that the scene is responding to, Xingchen's blindness, how they'll communicate verbally (and nonverbally if necessary), and what their limits are. It's also implied that they did some of this discussion as part of a broader course of therapy that they are doing with the help of a professional counselor.

It is apparently a standard of pubescent Andorian development to become, effectively, nocturnal. Song Lan, who prefers to be awake during ship-day, has not seen A-Qing since they left Archanis IV three days ago, although he has noticed the item history on the replicator getting significantly longer during that time.

"Good morning," he says to her, when she traipses into the ship's galley at 2200 ship-time.

"Ugh." She prods several buttons on the replicator and says, "I just want cured ojjo in my waffle. Why is this so hard."

"Because the designers of the replicator hated you personally," Song Lan says. "Have you tried the voice input if the display settings won't do it?"

"I can't get the phoneme for ojjo right," she says. "It keeps giving me eight plain waffles."

"That sounds like a dare," Xingchen says. "Do you need help eating them?"

She turns to squint angrily at him. Xingchen's expression is beatifically bland. He draws a card off the deck and taps its reader chit.

"No," she mutters. "Get your own waffles."

"Thank you, but I ate dinner an hour ago," Xingchen says.

"Dessert," Song Lan says. He discards his hand and draws five more.

"Not with cured ojjo on it," Xingchen says.

A-Qing finishes poking angrily at the replicator, waits for the food to be printed, and brings it over to the table. She sets the plate down with a click, then slings herself into the chair, pulls her feet up after her, and picks up the first waffle with her hands.

Xingchen discards three and draws more cards to fill his hand.

"Plans for today?" Song Lan asks. "Rakanthan jester on the table, face up." 

Xingchen taps a couple of his cards' readers. Song Lan hears a faint murmur from Xingchen's audio interface.

A-Qing grunts, swallows, and says, "We're too blueshifted for real-time comms with Modoyik's planet so I was gonna work on my part of the," she wiggles a hand dismissively, "business proposal."

"You didn't hear back from that incubator?" Xingchen says.

"It's still like the first week of some kind of local intercalary holiday on their home planet," A-Qing says. "I was told it would be two standard weeks at least."

"Rakanthan Prylar, Dahkur marcher," Xingchen says, setting the cards on the table. 

Song Lan discards one, picks up two. "Hand of seven," he says.

Xingchen grins. "You're so bad at this," he says fondly.

"I used to win kitchen duties off the other monks in card games," Song Lan says.

"In a monastery," Xingchen says. "Full of people known for their virtue and forthrightness. I, however, spent five years roaming the quadrant in the company of scoundrels."

"Thank you," A-Qing says.

" _You_ are a very good child," Xingchen corrects. She squirms, antennae wiggling towards and then away from him, and stuffs her face with more waffle. It's pretty cute. Song Lan will tell Xingchen about it later.

Song Lan loses the next hand profoundly as well, then thinks to ask A-Qing, "Has he been cheating again?"

"Yes," she says, as Xingchen covers his mouth over his laughter. "Can't you tell?"

"I once lost to him by forty-six points," Song Lan says, "with a machine shuffling."

"All things are possible if you play enough hands of cards," Xingchen says cheerfully. He turns his face towards A-Qing and tells her, "That was before you."

"You really do suck at card games," she says to Song Lan. "You want to learn how to cheat?"

He could win against Xingchen at cards for the...fifth? time in his life, maybe.

"It would be against my vows," he says, because that's more fun.

Xingchen's smile widens. "It's beneath you, but not me?" 

Song Lan says, "I don't remember you promising to uphold virtue in service to the Prophets."

A-Qing says, "No religion at the dinner table!"

"You're eating breakfast," Xingchen says.

"Ugh!" she groans, shoving another waffle into her mouth. Then, mouth full, she mumbles, "ee ee nn."

Song Lan, who decided two years ago that table manners weren't important when being co-guardian of this particular child, says, "What?"

She swallows hugely. "Deal me in."

Xingchen says, "It will be a pleasure to experience your work." 

She of course trounces both of them, even with Song Lan dealing, and then goes to work on her business proposal.

Xingchen deals the next one. "I'll play honestly," he promises.

Song Lan says, "I know you know how to cheat when you deal."

"I didn't," Xingchen says, more seriously. "You're actually not bad at cards, when I'm not cheating."

"I know," Song Lan says. "I won a lot of kitchen duties."

Xingchen taps his cards to hear their values, then says, "You like kitchen duty?"

"I was normally on gardening or solar panel maintenance." Song Lan actually has a fairly good hand this round. "Dahkur warrior, face up."

Xingchen puts his cards down, quick. "Elemspur farmer, face up; Elemspur delegate, face down. They didn't move you over after the first few times?" He draws two cards.

"There is evidence I inherited my sense of taste from my mother," Song Lan says delicately, considering his hand. "Compared to most of the other monks, I seem to taste sweetness much less strongly. Hedrikspool builder, face down."

Xingchen nods as Song Lan draws a card. "That explains your deka."

"Yes," Song Lan says, unembarrassed. "My early attempts at desserts did not go over well."

"More for you," Xingchen says. "Tal farmer, face down."

"That's not how the others saw it," Song Lan says. He discards two and draws more to complete his hand. Another Dahkur. It would have been nice if he hadn't just discarded a Huvara.

"They threw it into the replicator to break it down, didn't they," Xingchen says.

"I think it ended up ground up and used for a tart crust," Song Lan says. "I was too embarrassed to pay attention at the time."

"It wasn't your fault," Xingchen says. "You made it in a way that tasted good to you."

"I did," Song Lan admits. "Lotha delegate, face up."

Xingchen slides his fingers over the face-up cards on the table, letting them read themselves to him. The proportions of his hands are beautiful, and he uses them with delicacy. He is very good at being distracting with them when he works with cards in front of Song Lan, and he cannot see Song Lan's body language, but Song Lan tries to tell him, and show him, how effective it is.

"Tozhat builder," Xingchen says uncertainly. "Face...up. Yes."

"Hedrikspool farmer, face down." Song Lan says immediately.

Xingchen grins. "Of course," he says.

"That," Song Lan says, "Is an unwarranted stereotype and you know it."

"So I do," Xingchen says sweetly. "But it's very funny."

"If you say so." He nudges Xingchen's shin with his ankle. "Play a card."

Xingchen licks his lip, dragging his thumb over the reading marks on his cards. His lips remain a little parted afterwards. 

"Dahkur Prylar," he says. "Face up."

"Sweep," Song Lan says, and clears the face-up cards, putting down his hand in their place and reading the names as he does.

Xingchen double-checks the cards now face-up on the table, makes a disgusted noise, and discards his whole hand. 

"How am I winning right now?" Song Lan says.

"That Hedrikspool builder was unfair," Xingchen says.

"I remember someone cheating earlier," Song Lan says. 

"I could make it up to you," Xingchen says, and then, before Song Lan can say, _You mean by losing soundly now?_ , adds, "Carnally."

Song Lan says, "About that."

Xingchen settles his cards face-down on the table. "Yes?"

Song Lan drags his thumb over the reading marks on his hand of cards. "About what we talked about with Counselor Min last month."

"Yes," Xingchen says steadily.

"That," Song Lan says.

Xingchen's face passes through worry and into consideration. He breathes in. "I still don't know if I'll be able to say everything you need to hear," he says. "Or that I won't say anything you don't want to hear."

"It doesn't matter if it's true or not," Song Lan says.

Xingchen says, fiercely, "It matters to me."

"Then say the things that are true," Song Lan says. "And we can talk about the rest afterwards."

Xingchen settles his wrists on the table, then slides one across, hand searching. Song Lan catches it and lets Xingchen trace his knuckles, slip his fingers between Song Lan's own. "The last time I did that, we ended up separated for years."

"You do it every day now," Song Lan says. "I'm not afraid."

Xingchen licks his bottom lip, and afterwards his mouth stays parted, just slightly. Like he's waiting for a kiss. "You'll stop," he says. "If it's too much. Or not right."

"I'll stop," Song Lan says. "Will you?"

Xingchen breathes. In. Out. "That's not what I'm worried about. But yes."

"Good," Song Lan says, and accepts Xingchen holding his hand like he never wants to let go.

Generally, ra-d'ja are not required to wear traditional robes when going about their daily lives. Like all monastics, however, their daily duties are ostensibly guided by the Prophets' hands in their lives, either directly or through the teachings and visions that the Prophets have handed down. They are, therefore, always carrying out their vows, and it is not inappropriate to wear at least informal robes at all times. 

For a time after he took his vows, Song Lan's daily wear was informal robes: he was young, and visibly of Cardassian heritage. It seemed prudent, and the layers of dark fabric felt like reassurance. The formal robes have even more layers, in heavier fabrics, and the rich dark weight of them always felt like armor.

His body remembers those days as he puts on the informal robes in their bathroom. First the under-layer, in a breathable fabric, close to his skin. This is a new set, still black. The old sets, he wore until they all washed into a dark gray, but he's grown physically since then, and had to replace them.

Then the second robe, warmer against the chill of the ship's air. His hands still remember how to make the neckline lie properly.

The third, laid over the top and closed. He feels like a void between stars. The high neckline of the robes makes it harder to see the scales that trace his tendons, and his hair covers them even more.

Against all that black, his d'ja pagh glows. He checks the seams, aligns his cuffs, and steps out into the bedroom. 

Xingchen is wearing every layer of the formal robes of a ra-d'ja, but all in white, and kneeling in meditative posture on the floor. He is aligned exactly where the incense burner standing in for the Prophets would be if Song Lan kept a prayer alcove in their bedroom, which he does not, for precisely this reason.

While Song Lan is standing there, frozen with the enormity of it, Xingchen opens his eyes. They glow blue from within, like his d'ja pagh. He stands. The sleeves of his robes hide his hands.

"Come here," he says. His voice doesn't sound any different. His voice sounds like the echoes of ten thousand prayer bowls being struck. Song Lan staggers to him and only manages to stay standing by force of will. 

"Prophet," he manages, in the highest and most formal of the Bajoran registers.

"Song Lan," Xingchen says, and stretches out his hand. Song Lan catches it and presses his cheek to Xingchen's palm and lets Xingchen touch his face, stroke his cheekbones, his forehead, the ridges around his eyes. For reassurance, for both of them.

"My Zichen," Xingchen murmurs. "My Song Lan."

"Holy one," Song Lan says. Xingchen's hand is warm. Xingchen cups Song Lan's face in his hands. It's too hard to look at him, so Song Lan watches the pulse at his throat. "This one does not understand."

"Do you not?" Xingchen says gently. "Did you not pray to me and all my kind?"

"This one did," Song Lan says. His throat aches.

"Did you not expect us to listen?" 

Song Lan wants to say _yes_. He cannot say _no_. It would be apostasy. He says, "The Prophets listen to all the worlds and know all their sufferings."

"You also are among all the worlds, Song Zichen who is also Song Lan," Xingchen says. He is still cupping Song Lan's face. Every time he says Song Lan's Cardassian name it feels like being known to every part of himself. 

Xingchen leans closer, until his breath is hot on Song Lan's lips. "Did you not think I would listen?" he murmurs. "When my favorite among all the worlds wished for the Prophets to guide his path, and I saw the rightness of walking his path with him?"

Song Lan cannot move. He cannot breathe. He cannot kiss Xingchen, as Xingchen is signaling he wishes Song Lan to do. _My favorite_. He knows this. Xingchen has said it before, in sessions with their counselor. But it is real, now, in this moment, because it is not Xingchen, his friend and lover and co-guardian. This is the Prophet Xingchen has always been.

"I - " Song Lan fails to continue, and falls to his knees. He has done it enough in his life, preparing to pray, preparing to meditate. Never has he done it with - Xingchen, with - a Prophet come to flesh holding his face as he sinks down, tilting his chin upwards and stroking the tears from under his eyes.

"Ah," Xingchen says in dismay. "Too much, I think." And he sinks to his knees, one step outside the alcove, in front of Song Lan, as if he had walked down out of the Celestial Temple in answer to Song Lan's pain.

Song Lan says, "A holy one should expect their servants to be overcome by them." 

"Not a servant," Xingchen says. "Only those who listen to us as we listen to them. And you, for me. My favorite." He rests two fingertips on Song Lan's mouth.

Xingchen insisted on these checks. _I will not kiss you if you do not kiss me first. If you cannot speak, as you say is likely to happen, I cannot know how you are feeling without touching you. I cannot perform any version of this where it is you serving me._

"Why me," Song Lan says, against the pads of Xingchen's fingers.

"Your care for others," Xingchen says, putting his hand back on Song Lan's cheek. He is still holding Song Lan's face, but gently, so that Song Lan is the one setting the angle. Song Lan is letting Xingchen support him in looking directly ahead, into the face of a Prophet's chosen body. It would be disrespectful to look at him, if Xingchen were not allowing it in this way. 

"Your devotion to virtue, not because of our words but because you have judged them and found them right," Xingchen says. "Your physical beauty. Your kindness in the moment to those who are in pain." 

Song Lan curls his hands around Xingchen's wrists, not to pull him away, but to keep in contact. "My parents," Song Lan says, and then voices the deepest thing, the raw thing inside him that will not heal, not all his life. The thing Xingchen knows, because Song Lan has said it, in front of Xingchen with Counselor Min listening, and at night in his and Xingchen's bed, and over the little galley table where they eat. "I am not..." 

Xingchen breathes in. "Is a child whose parents do not act with virtue," he says, with absolute and terrible gentleness, "never permitted to have things of merit?"

Song Lan closes his eyes, covers his mouth, chokes back a sob. Doesn't pull away out of Xingchen's hands.

Xingchen brushes Song Lan's hair back behind his left ear and settles his palm back against Song Lan's cheek. 

"Will you permit me to touch your ear?" Xingchen murmurs. At Song Lan's hesitation, he says, "Your pagh is already known to me, and beloved. I do not need to feel it with flesh."

Song Lan nods. His ragged breathing hurts his throat. Xingchen gently pushes the rest of Song Lan's hair out of his face and behind his right ear, but does not replace his hand.

"You have not changed your d'ja pagh?" Xingchen asks.

Song Lan shakes his head. He cannot say: _Because it bore the mark of your favor._ It was more complicated than that.

"Oh, I am glad," Xingchen sighs, sweetly pleased. "I am glad," and now his voice is heavier, more intent, "that any who perceive it will know that all the merit that you bear has known my favor."

Song Lan opens his mouth. His chest aches. His eyelashes are heavy and wet. He closes his mouth, not knowing what to say.

"Surely you have felt my regard," Xingchen says.

With full and terrible honesty, Song Lan chokes out, "I did not understand."

Xingchen exhales slowly. "Understand, then. I will set my path to yours in my delight at your merit, and I will not step aside. Let me be your right foot on the path to which you have sworn your left." 

Of course Xingchen looked up the oaths for lay partners of monastics in Bajoran marriage ceremonies. Of course he did. He probably did it years ago. Song Lan sobs.

"Yes," he chokes out, and catches Xingchen's hand in one of his own, and kisses his palm.

Xingchen does not fall upon him like a storm. Xingchen takes Song Lan's hand in return and kisses Song Lan's palm, too, and says, with relief sighing through him in every syllable, "I am glad." And then he presses a gentle kiss to the inside of Song Lan's wrist, and his palm again, and the tip of each of his fingers.

"My Song Lan. My Zichen," Xingchen breathes, as prayerful as Song Lan ever was. The wet glimmer in his eyelashes hurts to look upon. "Whom I esteem most in all the worlds."

Song Lan asks, his voice still a wreck, "What may I call you?"

"Xingchen."

"Xingchen," Song Lan repeats, and Xingchen's mouth parts on a choked-back sob. His eyes close. He has Song Lan's palm pressed to his cheek, head tilted into the touch, his hand over Song Lan's to hold him there. 

Song Lan brushes his thumb along Xingchen's tear-damp cheekbone. "Xingchen," he says, though his voice shakes, and Xingchen turns toward him with that overwhelmed softness still to his mouth, "if I am yours, and our paths are set together," this is important, Xingchen requested it, but it's hard to say, like smoke in his mouth and needles in his throat, "are you also mine?"

"Always," Xingchen promises.

Song Lan kisses him. As softly as he knows how, as tentative as if they had only just met and Song Lan doubted his welcome. The first kiss he would have given when he was twenty, in the cramped little two-person room on the freighter he and Xingchen worked on for a time. When he still thought Xingchen was a Bajoran boy from the mountains.

Xingchen makes a startled noise against Song Lan's mouth, absolutely out of playfulness rather than real surprise. Song Lan jerks away, playing into it. He wants to speak, but the words won't come.

"I liked that," Xingchen says firmly. He brushes his fingers against his own mouth. "May I return it?"

Song Lan pulls his hand away from Xingchen's face in order to lace their fingers together, and squeezes Xingchen's hand once to mean yes.

Xingchen kisses him eagerly and without finesse, pretending at inexperience. Song Lan smiles into it and kisses back, with everything that he is now and wasn't yet then. Xingchen breaks it to laugh softly, entirely the himself of now and very much not the Xingchen he's supposed to be pretending to be. 

Song Lan pauses.

Xingchen brushes his lips along Song Lan's cheekbone, up to his ear. "I would like to continue, if it would please you also," he murmurs. The tone of his response is entirely his day-to-day self, not the weighty pronouncements he's been using. 

Song Lan turns to press his smile into Xingchen's neck and nods, and then, in a fit of erotic madness, tilts his head up and brushes his lips against the gem that drapes from Xingchen's d'ja pagh. It tingles against his skin, as it always does.

He opens his mouth. It doesn't matter that he knows what it will be like, that he does it often. It was his first fantasy of Xingchen: his mouth, and Xingchen's overwhelming pagh.

He lets the gem rest against his tongue. Xingchen says carefully, "I do not wish to risk hurting you." 

He pauses, mouth still open. The energy in the gem makes his tongue warm. His own ear, with the stone that marks how he has been changed by contact with the Prophets, begins to tingle.

Against his tongue, the metal tracery of the gem's setting is an irregular, immovable geometry. He closes his mouth. Xingchen says, "It will be strange."

Song Lan swallows. Xingchen heaves out a breath and fists his hands in Song Lan's robes. Song Lan's earlobe goes warm, like sitting under sunlight. He tongues at the gem in his mouth, tracing the crystalline lines of the metal setting, trying to lick at the spaces where the metal stands slightly away from the gem's surface. It doesn't taste like anything, but his mouth fills with saliva anyway. He swallows again. This time he feels it in his stomach, his ear. His arousal.

Xingchen is panting and leaning into him, the way he usually does when Song Lan does this. Xingchen says, voice tentative, "Does this please you also?"

Song Lan nods minutely, knows Xingchen feels it with the hand that's on the back of Song Lan's head and from the gentle tug at his ear. 

"I am glad," Xingchen says. Song Lan opens his mouth and lets the gem slip free of his tongue. The wet sheen of his spit highlights its bright glow. He kisses it, then mouths his way up Xingchen's ear. Each lick of his tongue sparks bliss through him, into his hands and down to his toes, and his own ear feels hot.

Xingchen shivers out, "Please let me touch you."

Song Lan kisses the snowflake-shaped clip at the top of Xingchen's d'ja pagh and pauses, waiting for Xingchen to elaborate. 

"Only so it will be fair," Xingchen adds. "To give you the same as you give me."

Song Lan licks Xingchen's ear again, teasing and inquisitive both, and feels Xingchen tilt his head into it even as the pleasure sings through Song Lan again, again. Xingchen is leaning into him, body shifting slightly at each touch of Song Lan's tongue. 

Song Lan skims one palm down Xingchen's back. He tucks his thumb under the knot of Xingchen's belt and tugs, a question.

Xingchen's breath catches. "Yes," he says. "If you do too."

Song Lan undoes Xingchen's belt. The outer robes part easily. There's a belt below that as well, tied more simply, and in front. Song Lan unties it, and then catches Xingchen's hands and guides them to his back, shows him how to undress Song Lan in turn. Song Lan had to dress Xingchen, before they started. Xingchen kept marveling at the sleeves, the weight of the fabric. The perfectionism with which Song Lan arranged the neckline. Does it matter that much? he said, and Song Lan said, _A Prophet wanting to make an overwhelming first impression would wear these robes perfectly so that his favorite would want to take them off,_ and Xingchen kissed him in a way that mussed the necklines up again. Song Lan had to redo them.

Song Lan glances up from the sight of Xingchen pushing Song Lan's robes open and finds Xingchen is wearing one of his more ironic smiles, probably from remembering the same thing. 

Xingchen presses his hand flat at Song Lan's shoulder, then drags it to rest over his throat, not pressing, just present. After a moment, he drags his hand lower, over the teardrop-shaped ridge just above Song Lan's heart, and then below that, where his heart pounds.

"There is no part of you I favor above all others," Xingchen says, like a promise, and then his touch sinks down, down, to Song Lan's arousal. "But this part of you I favor greatly."

Song Lan pushes into his touch, then wraps one arm around Xingchen's shoulders and tries to pull him closer. Xingchen follows, and makes a hungry, wanting noise when Song Lan takes hold of him in turn. Kisses his mouth, and then they are moving together, in each other's grasp, trading their rising pleasure between them, Xingchen's mouth demanding and intent. 

Xingchen touches him the way Song Lan responds to best, looser than what he likes for himself - not playing, now, either of them. Eager, robes tangled together, kneeling before one another on the floor. 

Song Lan feels Xingchen let go into Song Lan's touch. It was important, Xingchen said. No service between them, no debts, no obligation. Only choosing, every time. And so: Xingchen melts against him in completion, and pants, "You, now, let me," and Song Lan nods, as if he could want anything else, after feeling Xingchen so close and so undone. And Xiao Xingchen holds him, and helps Song Lan to come, kissing him through all of it.

After, Song Lan's hair is caught in Xingchen's d'ja pagh, and Xingchen laughs while trying to disentangle them until finally Xingchen gives up and takes it off. He cups it in his hand and works the strands of Song Lan's hair out one by one by touch, intent and smiling, and presses kisses to Song Lan's cheekbones and temple every time one comes loose.

Xingchen's robes are still on. Barely. The shoulders have slipped down to his elbows, and his hair cascades down his naked chest. He is always ravishingly beautiful. Like this, he is more than that, lit up with contentment and satisfaction. His eyes are back to their usual dark brown.

"So," Xingchen says, reaffixing his d'ja pagh with quick, fluid motions of his wrists and fingers. "Shall we shower, and talk about it?"

Song Lan says, throat hurting, "Yes." 

Xingchen stands, gathering the fabric of the robes in his hands as if to keep them from slipping off him entirely, and says, "I have no idea how to take care of these."

Song Lan smiles, kisses the corner of his mouth, and helps.


End file.
